All atwitter

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Just stumbled upon something really cool. One of Ukraine's prime TV channels, Inter, shot a series of video clips for Ukraine's 19th anniversary of independence (24th of August, today). Each of the clips is dedicated to an ethnic group living in Ukraine -- it starts with a short scene in the language of the ethnicity in question, and ends with the representatives of that ethnicity singing the Ukranian National Anthem, translated into the language of the ethnicity. There's also a caption that says how many of the representatives of this ethnicity live in Ukraine (e.g "there are 150,000 Ukraininan Romanians who call Ukraine Motherland") and it ends with a tagline "We're different, but we're all one!".

Pretty darn great. I was really pleasantly surprised to see this. Those of you who know me also know my peculiar attitude to national matters, but this is just fantastic. This is the best I can possibly wish to Ukraine in the years to come -- and with that, happy birthday, Ukraine!

Friends

How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?" — was that it? — "I prefer men to cauliflowers" — was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace — Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished-how strange it was! — a few sayings like this about cabbages.